Mary Anderson is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and scholar working at the intersection of theology, philosophy, psychoanalysis, and aesthetics. Her thought centers within the matrix of aesthetics and ethics, the act of creation by division, the event of language, and the birth of representation within the human as subject. Her doctoral dissertation in the Committee on the Study of Religion at Harvard University (2011) articulated an integral relation among the nature of Christ, representation, and the constitution of human subjectivity.
Anderson holds a Ph.D. and A.M. in Religion and English-Aesthetics from Harvard University, a M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School, a M.F.A. in Sculpture and Drawing from the School of Visual Arts, New York, a Post-graduate Diploma from Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland, and a B.F.A. from Alfred University, Alfred, NY. Her studio and scholarly research mine themes of origination, the nature of visibility, eros, purity, and consciousness – in the constitution of ethical subjectivity and in the making of an image. Recently named an Affiliate Scholar at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (2013-14),
Anderson is a Visiting Faculty in the Post-Baccalaureate program at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2013-14) and Academic Faculty in Visual and Critical Studies-English at Tufts at the Museum School. She is an Associate at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University (2011-14) and teaches across the studio arts, critical studies of art, writing, and the humanities. Currently developing an aesthetic theory of the image centered upon the differential constitution of ethical subjectivity, Anderson's interdisciplinary work incorporates visual art, writing, and contemplative practices.
In June 2013 she participated in the Training Seminar in Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Clinical Strategies and the Different Psychical Structures at Groupe interdisciplinaire freudien de recherché et d'intervention clinique et culturelle (GIFRIC) in Québec City, Québec, Canada. Her recent writings on art, film, theo-poetics, ethics, and aesthetics include "Art and Interreligious Dialogue: Coming to the Nearer Presence of the World" for The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Interreligious Dialogue (June 2013), a review of Lech Majewski's film The Mill & the Cross – "Way, Truth, and Life in Art" – for the Harvard Divinity Bulletin (Summer 2012), a commentary on Carolyn Shadid Lewis' video installation "From Twilight 'til Dawn" for ASPECT: The Chronicle of New Media Art (Vol. 21, 2013), and a trio of catalog essays on the photographic prints and ceramic art of David Davison – "La Trinità" (2011), "La Conversacíon" (2012), and "Intersticio" (2013) – for exhibitions in Asturias, Spain. Earlier essays on art, theology and philosophy have been published in Traversing the Heart: Journeys of the Interreligious Imagination (2011); Religion and the Arts (2010); Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review (2007); and Harvard Theological Review (2006).
In 2007 Anderson received a Tata Summer Research Grant from the South Asia Initiative at Harvard University for field research on aesthetics and religious subjectivity at the Ajanta and Ellora caves in Maharashtra, India. Forthcoming projects include an essay on Michael Haneke's film, Amour (2012), a paper entitled "Le Coeur of Dialogue: Art, Ethics, and Interstitial Aesthetics" for the Psychology and the Other conference at Lesley University (Oct 2013), and a lecture on "The Conscious Heart: On the Act of Creation and the Compassionate Teachings of Art" at the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard Divinity School (Sept 2013). As a visual artist, Anderson has received a Pollock-Krasner Fellowship (1998), a CIES Fulbright Lecturing and Research Grant (Scotland, 1996), a New England Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (1995), the Marguerite and William Zorach Fellowship at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (1995), and residencies at the Ucross Foundation (1997), Millay Colony for the Arts (1997), and the Scottish Sculpture Workshop (1996). Her postdoctoral work extends to studio research on representing liminality, intersubjectivity, and the place of the heart, in photographic, paper, and installation formats. She will contribute work for an exhibition on St. Brigid at Glenstal Abbey, Limerick, Ireland in 2014.
